


off-balance

by blatant_sock_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Basically just 'Lena has Problems™ and Rhea is a bad person', Dom/sub, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Implied Child Abuse, Mommy Issues, Unreliable Narrator, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 20:17:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10906707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blatant_sock_account/pseuds/blatant_sock_account
Summary: It was a dark and shameful part of herself, this craving—thislongingfor the love of a madwoman. One of the many, many traits that proved beyond a doubt that Lena would never be a good person, no matter what Ka—no matter what anyone else might choose to say. And to have a person who could see that, who could see just how weak and desperate she really was, who reacted to her very worst qualities with nothing but a smile and the type of kind words she’d wanted to hear so badly as a teenager sent away for her first year of college, it filled Lena with a sense of comfort and safety she truly hadn’t expected.





	off-balance

**Author's Note:**

> @cw Lena Luthor is very little and you're hurting her

The concrete was hard and unforgiving, the thin material of Lena’s pants doing nothing to shield herself as she dropped onto her knees entirely-too-eagerly the moment the other scientists and workers had filed out of the main room, taking another break after the portal had overheated and caused a brief power outage. Again.

( _Stupid_ , she took a moment to chastise herself, _overeager, embarrassing, idiotic_ …) 

But Rhea was patient with her, even now, just as she had been since they’d met. Patient beyond Lena’s ability to understand. Rhea was nothing but soft words and reassuring touches when Lena had said the wrong thing at dinner and disrupted the peaceful atmosphere of conversation they had carefully constructed. When Lena had nearly thrown their whole partnership—she wondered, their friendship?—away for fear of being lied to. Even when Lena had messed up her calculations time and time again, costing time and more money than she cares to think about with each additional botched test, failing to solve something that was supposed to have been so straightforward, something that _would_ have been straightforward for Lex, something that could change the whole world for the better if she could only just get it _right_.

Lena felt a cold hand beneath her chin, petting gently along the edge of her cheek, and she followed the movement, lifting her head from where it had drooped against her chest and looking up at Rhea with burning eyes.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she admitted. 

(She’d worked with countless other partners in her few years of engineering and then business, and she’d have rather terminated their relationship on the spot than cry in front of them. Even with—maybe _especially_ with Jack, back when she was just a child playing make-believe at being a hero. But there was something unique about Rhea. Even after just a handful of meetings, Lena sensed that she was someone special, someone trustworthy. Rhea knew how it felt to watch her family leave her. She knew just how it could tear someone apart, to miss someone who was still alive, just unrecognizable. And—and it felt as if Rhea could read her like a book, could understand the words that weren’t spoken between them, that between Lena’s sardonic jokes and venomous smiles, she still craved the approval and even love of her family, despite it all. 

It was a dark and shameful part of herself, this craving—this _longing_ for the love of a madwoman. One of the many, many traits that proved beyond a doubt that Lena would never be a good person, no matter what Ka—no matter what anyone else might choose to say. And to have a person who could see that, who could see just how weak and desperate she really was, who reacted to her very worst qualities with nothing but a smile and the type of kind words she’d wanted to hear so badly as a teenager sent away for her first year of college, it filled Lena with a sense of comfort and safety she truly hadn’t expected. 

She wondered, at times, if Rhea felt the same way. If Rhea woke from confused dreams of reconciliations with her son and never-spoken affirmations of love echoing in her head that she was unable to classify as a nightmare or a wishful thought. 

She imagined so. How else could Rhea have caught on so quickly to the way Lena subtly leaned into every touch, clung to every compliment like it was the last she’d hear.)

“Oh, Lena.” Rhea trailed her hand up along the side of Lena’s face, scratched at her scalp gently enough not to undo her tight ponytail. “These things take time. You know that.” 

Lena did know that. She was a scientist first and foremost, after-all. But she was struck with the inexplicable urge to pout, to ball up her hands into fists and cry that it just wasn’t _fair_ like a child deprived of a toy. She did neither of those things, instead focused her frustrated energy on the feeling of Rhea’s fingers in her hair.

“I want it to work,” Lena said dumbly, hating the way her voice so-clearly trembled as she spoke. Her hands felt heavy and awkward dangling beside her, and so she clasped her fingers together and laid them politely at her lap. The way she’d been taught to sit at family gatherings shortly after her adoption, and a habit she rarely found herself falling back into anymore. She sniffled once, and immediately regretted it.

“Oh, honey, I _know_.” Rhea bent over, hovering above Lena, staring into her eyes with a look of such compassion and—and _sincerity_ that Lena was only used to seeing from one other person nowadays. “And trust me, if anybody on this planet can make this transmatter portal work, it’s you.” 

Lena scoffed, tried to hide her face away. But Rhea wouldn’t allow it, instead grabbing tight into her hair—just a step below painful—to keep her still.

“I mean it,” Rhea said without looking away from Lena’s eyes. “You are a brilliant girl.” 

Lena bit her lip, hard. She focused on the sharp pain from her teeth, the dull tugging of the hand twisted in her hair—did everything she could to keep from thinking too hard of the easy, honest way Rhea offered her praise she had yet to earn. 

(There was something terrifying about people who so willingly offered her kindness. People who assured her that she was a good person, could never be like her mother, despite having no evidence, despite barely _knowing_ just how dark and hopeless her thoughts frequently turned. People who were neither furious nor mortified to learn that Lena was having trouble creating this portal, who asked for _her_ help rather than her ability to get into contact with Lex despite his additional years of experience and knowledge and talent and charisma, who didn’t mock Lena for her inability to replicate technology that was apparently so common on another planet.

People who brought her roses and hugged her tight and responded to her confessions of fantasizing about a woman’s death with a warm, safe arm wrapped around her and a hesitant breath so close to the side of her forehead that Lena could still remember the way it felt with perfect clarity all this time later. 

It was terrifying, which was why Lena once again tilted her head down, avoiding the eye-contact. And why, when Rhea tugged Lena’s head back up with a painful jolt and a hardened “I’m speaking to you”, Lena felt her cheeks burn with an obvious flush, heard a gasp, high and needy, slip from her lips.)

Rhea hummed, giving Lena a slow, obvious onceover, the judgement clear in her eyes.

“We will take a break,” she said, letting go of Lena’s hair unceremoniously. And it was only when Lena felt herself fall graceless back against her calves that she realized just how strong Rhea’s grip had been. Rhea ran a thumb along the side Lena’s jaw, her touch gentle where seconds before it had been cruel. “And when we continue, I know you will keep doing amazing work on our project. And I know that you will eventually perfect it, no matter how long it takes.” 

Lena nodded jerkily, her eyes wide. Because, fuck, when Rhea said things like that it was like every cell in Lena’s body wanted nothing but to prove her right. To prove that she hadn’t made a mistake in relying on Lena for help, rather than someone better, or smarter, or more experienced. She would do this. For Rhea.

(And for her mother. And for Lex. And for herself. And, maybe. Maybe for Kara too.)

(Because she still remembered, all-too-clearly, the day she had first showed Kara her alien detection device. Her effort to make the world safer, to improve the lives and comfort of the everyday average Joe who couldn’t count on the supervision of a full-time security team or the arranged protection of Supergirl at possibly dangerous events. Average Joes like Kara, who was supposed to feel safer with the ability to determine who around her could have inhuman powers or violent motivations, and who instead hesitated away from the device with an all-too-apparent fear, allowing the distance between them to fill with distrust and accusations. 

And Kara was obvious enough in her reaction that Lena dismantled the device once the interview had abruptly ended, suddenly convinced despite the positive reaction that the new reporter might in fact not be of Earth. Suddenly wondering whether the circuits of her early prototype had fried after two consecutive uses without a cool-down period.

And—and Lena realized, now, that she had no idea how to be a good person. It simply wasn’t something she knew. Not with the subtle way Kara had grimaced before touching a device intended to make her feel safe. But Lena still felt, in the back of her mind behind all thoughts of humanitarian services and profits and media coverage, that perhaps helping an alien find their way home might be the right first step towards being even a fraction as good as Kara believed her to be.

She wanted to do something to give Kara a reason to smile at her the way she does.)

“Lena,” Rhea’s commanding tone broke Lena out of her thoughts, thoughts of nothing but impossible futures and failed chances. “You were so good before, getting on your knees for me right away. Has anyone told you how well-behaved you are?”

Lena _knows_ her cheeks are badly flushed, and she idly wonders whether Rhea can hear her heartbeat, hear the way she reacts to statements like that. Either way, she shakes her head slowly while looking up at Rhea through her lashes with wide eyes, finding the idea of using her words particularly unappealing in a way she can’t entirely understand herself. She feels embarrassed, or perhaps immature, but in this moment her respectful vocabulary is failing her. 

“Of course they haven’t, you poor thing…” Rhea reached behind Lena’s head and pulled roughly at the elastic holding her hair up until it snapped between her fingers, causing a slight twinge to ripple around the top of Lena’s scalp while her hair fell against her shoulders. 

“Would you, um—” Lena stuttered. She vaguely recalled the public speaking classes she had taken before her early admission to high school, recalled the tense dinner conversations with her mother during which she would recall all the ways she’d learned to remain composed, recalled wooden rulers slapped against the inside of her wrist with hissed instructions to speak clearly and with purpose or to not speak at all. “May I kiss you?”

(It was the first time she’d asked for that, even though their working relationship had long since become… muddied. And despite everything else they had done, Lena still had to fight the urge to fidget where she sat, to fiddle with her folded hands.)

Rhea ran her hand through Lena’s hair. “Oh, darling, not yet.” Right, of course. ( _Stupid_.) Lena bit the inside of her cheek hard, the feeling almost drowning out the rest of Rhea’s words. “After all, the polyatomic anions are still reacting in unpredictable ways. But you’re going to re-work the calculations, and then I am going to give you anything you want. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, you’re right, that was—” Inappropriate, immature, the kind of thing a fumbling date would ask before junior prom. “Let’s get back to work.”

And Lena made to sit up, eager for the chance to direct her full attention to the ways she kept messing up a formula rather than all the ways she’d messed up her attempts to connect with others. But Rhea’s hand was on her shoulder now, pushing down hard, holding her against her knees. 

( _Oh_ , Lena thought, _she’s strong_. The thought brought with it, unbidden, the image of Lena wrapped up too-tight in her arms, struggling and squirming to escape, heavy breaths and cries for maybe-help-maybe-relief leaving her in short, desperate huffs while Rhea looked down and laughed, taunted that Lena was a big girl who could take care of herself.)

“Lena,” Rhea said, her voice low and rough and wrapping around Lena like a warm blanket. “Why would I want to rush back into work when I have you right where I want you? Now sit still and close your eyes.”

Lena settled, calmed by her words, by the fact that Rhea _wanted_ her. She closed her eyes and listened. The slow whirring of the portal’s generator, the low hum a pleasant contrast to the screeching noises it had made earlier in the afternoon. Her phone ringing, again. (It had been off-and-on all afternoon, an unfamiliar number that Lena had been too busy to take a close look at.) The soft clacks of Rheas heels against the floor as she stepped away from Lena and—away? 

A soft, confused noise escaped Lena’s throat, and she very nearly opened her eyes before Rhea reassured her.

“It’s okay, darling. Just noticed someone left a conductor on.” Rhea’s nails tapped several times against a surface, presumably Lena’s tablet to fully power down the machine. Her footsteps grew louder again. “I’m hoping to avoid any deadly explosions for the time being, I happen to like you.”

Lena could feel her own cheeks ache from the goofy smile she was sure decorated her face. “Thank you.”

“Now, no more interruptions.” 

A gentle hand ran through Lena’s tousled hair, scratched lightly at her scalp, curled into a fist and _pulled_ Lena’s head back with surprising force. Lena gasped, eyes squinted shut, and as her lips parted Rhea slipped two fingers of her free hand easily into her mouth.

It was too much, too fast, and Lena wanted to pull away, wanted to sob at the burning in her scalp and the feeling of long fingernails prodding against her tongue, _wanted_.

She whimpered high and needy around Rhea’s fingers, ducked her head forward to take more, to feel the pull in her hair even tighter.

“My sweet girl, you’re doing so well.” Rhea’s voice was like honey, sweet warmth dripping down Lena’s spine and leaving her feeling like she was floating, barely noticing the continued sting in her knees. Her hand, however, was rough, thrusting into Lena’s mouth and curling down to press against her tongue, pull her jaw open. Cruel and sharp and overwhelming until Lena was choking around her fingers, gasping for air, her lips and chin messy with drool.

( _This_ was why she needed Rhea, why she so genuinely dreaded the moment Rhea would step into the finished portal and leave her behind.

Rhea understood hurt and loss and betrayal, better than anyone else Lena knew. She knew what it meant to be the last of a family, knew what it meant to have her happiest memories irreparably tainted, and then what it meant to come to understand that taint, expect it, rely upon it, crave it.

And Lena found herself thinking of Kara, as she so often did during the moments when Rhea would touch her. Kara wasn’t the naïve fool some took her to be, and Lena knew there was more to her character than she’d been allowed to see—much of it likely related to how she wound up on Earth pretending to be a human in the first place. But still, Kara remained so steadfastly optimistic, so convinced that Lena could still somehow be a good person.

Lena wondered what Kara would think if she saw her like this, bent on her knees, letting Rhea fuck her throat and pull her hair until she was near tears, until she moaned brokenly and shifted her hips, until she was desperate for more pain. Would Kara be disgusted? Would she be angry? Would she give Lena a slowly poisonous caring look that indicated her disappointment while simultaneously promising that she would still be her friend? That she would still care for Lena even if she didn’t deserve it?

God, she was fucking wet.)

Rhea pulled her fingers away abruptly, leaving Lena leaning forward into nothing. “Such a beautiful, intelligent little girl,” she hummed, and oh, _oh_ , Lena felt her words tingle all throughout her body, leaving her hot and craving, fitting neatly into a carved-out space in her chest and leaving her so full with emotion. 

When she opened her eyes, Rhea was smiling gently down at her, and Lena felt the first tears slip down her cheeks. She wanted Rhea to keep smiling at her like that, like Lena had done something right and like Rhea was maybe—maybe proud of her. It reminded her of when she had first taken the SAT, nine years old, and had scampered excitedly around the house to show Lillian her results. Back when she thought she’d be able to get anything other than a tight-lipped grin and a request to not run indoors. But Rhea’s smile was warm, the kind she’d longed to see for nearly twenty years, and Lena hated that it would be taken from her again, that Rhea’s presence on this planet was a timer counting down. 

(The thought of sabotaging the project had crossed Lena’s mind, briefly. It would be cruel, awful, selfish—but Lena did have a reputation to live up to. But then she’d remembered the way Rhea had told her with such ease and sincerity that she wished she’d had a daughter like Lena. Like it was the simplest thing in the world to say, like Lena hadn’t longed to hear those words enough to have been briefly tempted to throw away her morals and innocent lives for it, like Lena hadn’t gotten drunk and thrown her entire collection of suddenly-too-pretentious wine glasses against the wall of her kitchen the first night of Lex’s trial remembering the boy who had let her sneak into his room at night to read his physics textbooks and had told her that he was so glad to have her as a sister.

Lena _couldn’t_ disappoint Rhea.)

“May I please touch you?” Lena asked, swallowing thickly in a sorry attempt to hide the way her voice shook. 

Rhea chuckled. “Intelligent _and_ polite. Of course, darling.” But the moment Lena moved her hands from her lap she felt a sudden tug on her hair, strong and surprising enough to pull her chest back and cause a hiss to escape her lips. 

“Ah, ah, hands behind your back, dear,” Rhea scolded in a light, teasing voice. A false reprimand with no venom behind it, so unlike what Lena was used to that as she moved her trembling hands behind her back she found herself half-bracing for a sharp, tugging pinch to the shell of her ear.

(It didn’t come, though. Just the feeling of Rhea petting her hair, smoothing out the place where she’d pulled, cooing that Lena was such a good, obedient girl.) 

Rhea’s free hand slipped to the hem of her dress, her thumb dipping below the fabric, pulling slowly upwards. Her thighs were soft and lanky, and Lena moved in to nuzzle against them at the first trace of pressure from the hand at the back of her head. She kissed overeagerly at the newly exposed skin, nosed slowly upwards, sucked sloppily at skin that wouldn’t bruise. 

Lena pressed her nose to the soft material of Rhea’s panties and licked delicately at the small wet patch at the front, the evidence that she was wanted. Soft kitten licks grew longer, emboldened by Rhea’s slight noises of encouragement, until Lena could feel the outlines of Rhea’s labia on her tongue even through the fabric.

“Darling, hold on” Rhea’s voice was low, thrumming through Lena’s insides and settling low in her stomach. Lena didn’t resist as Rhea pulled her head back, but allowed herself a petulant whine, a childish pout she hadn’t resorted to since before she was sent away to boarding school. Rhea chuckled. “My little girl, did you think you were going to make me come through my clothing?”

Lena shrugged, feeling somewhat foolish. But the gesture was lost, because in that moment Rhea curled her middle finger into the bottom of her underwear, pulling the material off to the side, and Lena’s eyes were instantly drawn to her sex. Dark hair and puffy lips and, oh, the faint shine of arousal, and it would be so easy for Lena to just lean forward, gather the taste on her tongue—

“Remember,” Rhea said, “no hands.” 

“Oh, um—uh-huh, right, of course…” Lena was mumbling, messing up her words, but she could hardly bring herself to care, too enticed by the feeling of wiry hair pressing against her nose to worry about being punished later for her missteps. She started slow, flattened her tongue just above Rhea’s entrance and licked hot and long along her slit, savored the way Rhea tugged Lena closer by the back of her head, pressed Lena’s forehead against her skin. 

“You’re wonderful.” Lena was grateful for the praise. Grateful, because aside from the comments Rhea was silent above her, taking in measured breaths through her nose, rolling her hips lazily against Lena’s tongue.

Lena licked quickly at Rhea’s clit before craning her neck to take it between her lips. 

“Oh! Yes, right there, oh, good girl,” Rhea’s hips jerked abruptly, pressing herself harder into Lena’s mouth.

(There was so much Lena didn’t know about Rhea, so much Rhea wouldn’t share with her. Lena could understand the polite, sometimes witty deflections of questions about family—after all, she did much the same—but it drove Lena up the wall with frustrated longing when Rhea would refuse to answer questions about what her planet was like. She would refuse to share details of scientific progress or theoretical understanding, with a somewhat biting laugh, a teasing remark that the world would likely treat Lena as a lunatic if she tried to share the technology of Daxam. 

“I’m doing _you_ a favor, Lena,” she’d said once. “Because I know you’ll take one look at our energy production and be filled with ideas to save your world. But nobody will believe you, because nobody will understand it the way you do. I believe there is an allegory in your culture for it… ‘Cassandra’? I don’t want to do that to you, hurt you like that.”

And Lena understood. She was filled with burning curiosity, but she understood. After all, she’d pressed further into topics she wasn’t supposed to before, and then she had watched Jack die by her own hand to pay for it. Lena understood. 

But what Lena did know—what she was allowed to know—was Rhea’s body. That Rhea preferred hard, fast licks against her clit, no teasing, no delays. Rhea liked the feeling of Lena humming against her, liked the feeling of Lena’s desperate whimpers even better. Rhea would smile when she offered Lena compliments, without fail, in a way that felt warm and unfamiliar like coming home to a cozy, lived-in mountainside cabin after being caught in the snow. Rhea would not hesitate to shove Lena away from her and onto the cold floor thoughtlessly if Lena tried to touch herself. Rhea always came silently, her only indications being the way she closed her eyes, let her mouth tip open delicately, fisted her hand in Lena’s hair and pulled hard enough to draw tears from her eyes—)

Finally, Rhea’s eyes fluttered open, and she sighed deeply. “Thank you, darling.” And her voice was low and raspy, satisfied in a way that made Lena distinctly aware of her own rapidly beating heart and ragged breaths, the too-light pressure of her thighs pressed together beneath her. 

She needed more, needed Rhea’s touch, needed anything Rhea was willing to give her. She would let Rhea rip her clothes off and leave dark purple bruises scattered all along her body, she would bend over the nearest desk as Rhea fucked her from behind, she would rut against Rhea’s leg like some sort of desperate animal, she would lie back against the floor and touch herself and beg Rhea to please please _please_ let her come. “Please…” she started, her voice slipping quiet and weak from trembling lips. 

But Rhea had already untangled her hand from Lena’s mussed hair, and she was readjusting her clothes, smoothing the wrinkles from her dress while staring off at the generator with an interested expression, and she ignored the way Lena shook in front of her, and Lena could cry, Lena _was_ crying.

Rhea turned back toward Lena at the sound of her quiet sob, and her expression softened. “Oh, you poor child.” 

She crouched down in front of Lena, looking calm and put-together, not a hair out of place while Lena’s cheeks were splotchy and wet with tears, her eyeliner messy, her lipstick smeared all across her lower face along with Rhea’s come. 

Rhea touched a hand to Lena’s cheek, delicately avoiding her own slick. “I know it’s hard, but I need you to focus.” Lena met her eyes with some difficulty. She couldn’t keep _still_ , though, and behind her back she dug her fingernails into her palms hard until the sharp sting refocused her. 

“Lena,” Rhea said, her tone unlike anything Lena had heard from her before, “when you finish this portal—and you _will_ —I want you to come with me.”

“Wha—?” And Lena’s head was fuzzy, her thoughts weighed down by the heat between her legs, the way her underwear stuck uncomfortably when she shifted. She replayed the words in her head—muffled as if she were hearing them underwater—and frowned, confused, the implicit order so far removed from anything else they’d done together. 

“My darling,” Rhea stroked Lena’s cheek with her thumb just below her ear, and Lena found herself leaning into the touch immediately, desperate as she was for the attention. “My sweet girl, I can give you a home. I can give you the kind of life you’ve always deserved to have, that nobody else on this filthy planet can offer.” 

There were alarm bells ringing in the back of Lena’s mind, but in that moment they were as dull and muted as the rest of her thoughts. “But…” she hesitated, unable to put her thoughts into words. But, her company, her green power initiatives, her portal-driven emergency response blueprints, her movie night with Kara next week, _Kara_. “I can’t?” 

“You _can_ , Lena,” Rhea urged, bringing their faces closer together. “You can have a family again.”

Rhea’s voice was enticing, hypnotizing, promising, but it was too late. Lena’s thoughts had latched onto the way Kara would insist on bringing her large stack of DVDs with faded box covers to Lena’s apartment rather than use one of Lena’s many on-demand subscriptions because she thought it felt more real that way, onto the excited confidence in Kara’s voice and posture when she would demanded Lena to ‘watch this!’ and proceeded to catch about a fourth of the popcorn she’d tossed up in the air in her mouth, onto the rushed assurances that ‘that wasn’t what was supposed to happen Lena it was supposed to be _cool_ ’ while she apologetically brushed popcorn kernels off the seat of Lena’s couch. 

Kara, who would wait at Lena’s apartment door with her usual nervous energy. Who would send Lena light-hearted, non-accusatory texts asking about late work nights. Who would offer to drop off a sandwich from that place she remembered Lena liked and who would then drive herself into a worry at Lena’s lack of response. 

“N-no, uh, I need to stay here.” It hurt to say, and Lena wished, not for the first time, that the universe would stop forcing her into these choices, these temptations. Soul-crushing ‘this-or-that’ scenarios that made a voice deep within her say that perhaps it was time to just take the easy way out, to do something selfish, to have someone who would love her rather than a short line of people ready to offer uncomfortable smiles and promises that she did the right thing. “I’m sorry, I—I can’t.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Rhea said, and there it was again, that worry, that feeling that something was off. But before Lena could allow herself to think about it, Rhea had stood and held her hand outstretched for Lena to take. “Shall we get back to work? I sense you’re close to a breakthrough.”

(And, no, there wasn’t anything wrong—there couldn’t be. Because in this moment Rhea was so much of what Lena had admired in the boy she had once looked up to as a role model: Lex’s excitement, his encouragement, his desire to learn, his desire to do _good_. Rhea was all of it, without the hatred that had consumed him. It was like taking a step back in time, a step into an alternate universe to see the sort of things they could be accomplishing together if Lex had never become obsessed with revenge.)

“Of course.” Lena took her hand and stood, but kept her grip strong on Rhea’s hand, wanted to keep her mentor and friend close while she still could.


End file.
